In the United States we have heard much of the “Keynesian revolution.” It has been made to appear that something entirely new, unrelated to previous movements, has appeared to save the world. When communism is mentioned we are told Keynesism is the perfect antidote. When depressions are discussed the Keynesian solution is put forth. When socialism is broached then the Keynesian theory is presented as a substitute. Whenever Big Government, huge foreign spending and heavy taxes are subject of complaint the Keynesian formulas are thrown in to convince one and all that these things are good for mankind.

In our study the obvious procedure was to check the personnel of the Keynesian camp. As noted before, old names identified with Fabian socialism began to appear as chief spokesmen for Keynesism.

Norman Thomas, titular head of the Socialist Party, declared: “Keynes has had great influence and his work is especially important in any reappraisal of socialist theory. He represents a decisive break with laissez-faire capitalism.”(1) Norman Thomas’ old associates of the League for Industrial Democracy, Alvin Hansen and Seymour E. Harris (both, professors of economics at Harvard) have become the chief spokesmen for Keynesian economics in the United States.(2) As usual, Harvard has carried the ball for extremists.(3)

The chief propagandists for socialism in the United States, Stuart Chase, (Harvard 1910) and George Soule, unlimbered their heaviest propaganda guns in favor of Keynesism.(4) Stuart Chase gloats over the success of this new socialist symbol and its successes:

John Maynard Keynes, as we have seen, stimulated furious activity in economic circles. Nobody could writ paper without mentioning him. In due time some of his followers turned their attention to the formulation of programs to help the United States out of the great depression. Alvin Hansen, Lauchlin Currie, and many other able economists could be named. In cooperation with lawyers, engineers, political scientists, they helped frame such projects as the Securities and Exchange Commission, new banking and labor laws, the vast farm credit organizations, the AAA, NRA, FDIC, Rural Electrification, TVA, FSA, Social Security, and many more. Keynes had said, “Do something”—and they went to work!(5)

According to the above account Keynes, while sitting in London, was practically the “unofficial President of the United States.”

The infiltration and domination of key government bureaus by socialistic elements would not have been possible under the open label of socialism. However, by pretending to “save American Capitalism,” old socialists, reinforced by new young recruits from universities, were phenomenally successful in imposing socialist measures upon society.

Old Guard socialist George Soule boasts:

Keynes gave the members of the professional economic fraternity a new lease on life. They now had a pattern of thinking which they could use in the positions of advice and responsibility to which many were called in government, banking, and even business. They could go on with endless refinements and elaborations. No wonder that Keynes had converted the British professional economists almost to a man, and that in the United States his influence has swept almost all before it. Adherence to laissez-faire in the classical vein can rarely now be found except in the writings of members of the economic “underworld,” or among politicans or public-relations experts defending some special interest against some special tax or regulation.(6)

Keynesism secured the blessing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Harvard 1904). The Pandora’s box was now open. Not only the socialists but communist agents and spies plus opportunists and careerists of all stripes, climbed on the Keynesian bandwagon. The socialists discreetly avoided mentioning that Keynes and the Keynesian theories were merely clever facades to cover the conquest by Fabian socialism of an unsuspecting population.

At all times the “party line” of the Keynesians was set and created in England by members and associates of the Fabian society. In fact, at no time have any of the fundamentals of left-wing economic and political theories orginated in the United States. The Marxian socialist theories were brought to the United States by German immigrants. The Leninist-Stalinist doctrines were distilled in Russia. The Fabian socialist theories with their Keynesian garb originated in England.

Americans have no genius for originating grandiose ideologies. However, American leftists have demonstrated great tactical ability in propagating them in new sugar-coated forms.

Harvard Professor Seymour Harris even has the audacity to hide Keynesian socialism under the label of “Saving American Capitalism.” Harris and Alvin Hansen, (later joined by J. Kenneth Galbraith) converted the Harvard Economics Department into a virtual Keynesian monopoly. Hundreds of instructors issued forth from the Harvard graduate school to infect educational institutions throughout the United States with Keynesian socialism. The approval of the New Deal, and later of the Fair Deal, made Keynesism the officially recognized economic theory.

The late Sumner H. Slichter, a Harvard professor for almost thirty years, was responsible for infecting hundreds of students with Fabian socialist propaganda under the pretext of “required reading for economic courses.”* He was adept at propounding the Keynesian creed by means of conservative phraseology.

Slichter did incalculable harm to our free enterprise society by advocating a national program of creeping inflation. Today, his disciples continue this dangerous policy. If unchecked such a course of action could destroy our present social fabric.

Actually Felix Frankfurter and his followers at Harvard had formed a powerful cell in the heart of the Government in Washington immediately after the New Deal was installed there. The stock jocular advice to the young success-seeker to “go to Harvard and turn left” was more truth than fiction. The New York Times, which pioneered in spreading Keynesism in this country, reports it thus:

To be in the “Harvard group” meant entree to the inner sanctum of the New Deal, where Felix Frankfurter, then a Harvard law professor, was lord high priest. “Felix the Frank” salted emergency agencies with prize students and proteges such as Corcoran and Cohen. Thus when Frankfurter pulled strings from Cambridge, policy decisions followed in Washington as if by magic. (Richard and Daz Harkness, “Where Are Those Rampaging New Dealers?,” New York Times, section 6, May 22nd, 1960, p. 86.)

Harvard’s Seymour Harris boasts that long before the printing of Keynes’ General Theory the Keynesian forces had conquered:

Yet the general pattern, especially as New Dealism evolved, checked well with Keynes’ strategy and tactics. More money, lower rates of interest, loan expenditure, measures to raise the propensity to consume, some freedom from dictation from abroad—all of these were the ingredients out of which the New Deal cocktail was made. The over-emphasis on raising money incomes as the means to rising output—all of these were ultimately largely repudiated . . . Keynes’ theories and programs undoubtedly had a substantial effect, even if it is difficult to trace. By 1933, the supporters of the new policies and even the man in the street, though unaware of the sources, were using arguments that Keynes had made commonplace.(7)

While casting a few stones at “American businessmen,” Harris notes that Keynesism conquered America even more throughly than it did Britain:

In this country, the view is widely held that Keynes contributed greatly to the evolution of New Deal economic policies; and the mere mention of his name will bring forth the most vituperative remarks by conservative American businessmen. Indeed, American economic policies in the thirties conformed to the Keynesian pattern much more than did the British†

Harris summed it up for the Keynesian forces in the United States in typical Kremlin-type cliches:

Our economy is no longer predominantly one of millions of workers, farmers, and small enterprises operating in a competitive manner; rather, each monopolistic group is organized in large agglomerations, struggling for the maximum share of the national output. Each monopolistic group has tremendous political as well as economic power, and is in a position to paralyze our economy.‡

The establishment of Keynesian principles in government circles have been so thorough that even non-socialists and anti-socialists have, been compelled to carry out Keynesian policies. Harvard’s J. Kenneth Galbraith, gloats over the fact of a government frozen in the Keynesian pattern:

There is a widespread notion that one of the most primitive of modern ideological choices is whether a government shall be Keynesian or not . . . no present or future administration really has the non-Keynesian choice . . .(8)

Keynesian leftists while holding power under the New Deal and Fair Deal Administrations constructed bureaucracies (manned by swarms of bureaucrats under civil service protection) which operate as self-socialized forms moving leftward regardless of the desires of the electorate or of elected officials. They are confident that a great national debt and continuing inflation plus enormous internal and foreign commitments assure the continuance of Keynesian operations for generations to come regardless of who is in power. The only alternative to Keynesism would be some very drastic political surgery accompanied by a re-organization and abolishment of the greatest part of the Federal bureaus.

Congressman James B. Utt (Calif.) reports:

We are rapidly coming to a point where a complete change of elected officials, including Congress and the White House, can mean little change in policy. You are governed more and more by people for whom you have never voted, for whom you never will vote, whom you have never seen, and whom you cannot recall by your vote. They are entrenched in the boards, bureaus and commissions, even at the policy level. For example, you may think that the Secretary of Labor sets the policy of his Department, but I know that much of the policy of that Department is set by Civil Service employees who have been with the Department for twenty years, and they have no intention, now or ever, of recommending to the Secretary of Labor any policy which does not fit their personal philosophy of government, and you cannot remove them or replace them by your ballot. That same situation exists in the State Department, and in fact in every bureau, board and commission. This is a form of invisible government and can lead to the most oppressive type of tyranny.(9)

Professors Hansen, Harris and other would-be administrators of society, do not set the tone of Keynesian-socialist propaganda. This is the task of such perennial socialist politicians as George Soule and Stuart Chase. These are the true experts in tricky and devious propaganda methods. Their pronouncements set the pace for the huge swarm of actual and would-be socialist bureaucrats. The self-righteous attitude that “I possess all of the virtues and sense of what is right while those that I criticize comprise all the evil” is their standard pose.

Stuart Chase, representing the Fabian socialists in the United States proposed Keynes as the socialist ideal long before Keynes wrote the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936. Chase outlined the Keynesian principle of abandoning the gold standard in 1932 declaring: “Of course, currency can be kept in line deliberately, if men are so disposed, but a ‘managed’ currency laissez-faire will not permit.”(10)

He also states that: “Mr. Keynes, following Karl Marx, used the great corporation as an institution increasingly ripe for state control or outright ownership. He finds many parallels with the state trusts of Soviet Russis.”(11)

Stuart Chase called his book A New Deal. It was written in 1931 and published in 1932. Franklin D. Roosevelt borrowed this socialist slogan as a label for his administration. Mr. Chase, in describing the socialist aims, points up the matter:

Best of all, the new regime would have the clearest idea of what an economic system was for. The sixteen methods of becoming wealthy would be proscribed—by firing squad if necessary—ceasing to plague and disrupt the orderly process of production and distribution. Money would no longer be an end, but would be thrust back where it belongs as a labor-saving means. The whole vicious pecuniary complex would collapse as it has in Russia. Money making as a career would no more occur to a respectable young man than burglary, forgery or embezzlement. “Everyone,” says Keynes, “will work for the community and, if he does his duty, the community will uphold him.” Money making and money accumulating cannot enter into the life calculations of a rational man in Russia. A society of which this is even partially true is a tremendous innovation.(12)

Thus, the “gentle socialists” would enforce their Keynesian formulas “by firing squad if necessary.” What was the consequence of advocating such mass slaughter? Within 24 months after publication of this policy, Mr. Chase was appointed to the National Resources Committee and a year later further rewarded by appointment to the Resettlement Administration. He quickly climbed to the Securities & Exchange Commission (1939) the TVA (1940) and finally settled in U.N.E.S.C.O. in 1949.

Two years before Keynes’ General Theory startled the world every major premise of that work was anticipated by Stuart Chase and George Soule as spokesmen of American socialism. The credit, however, does not begin there. The American Fabians merely restated the position held by the British Fabian Society.

Curiously the authorities used by Chase in his book the Economy of Abundance (1934) were G.D.H. Cole, J.A. Hobson, Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell, J.M. Keynes, John Strachey and H.G. Wells, all spawned by the British Fabian Society. American sources used were Charles A. Beard, Adolph Berle, Harry W. Laidler, George Soule, Rexford Guy Tugwell and Thorstein Veblen, all Fabians of the home grown variety.(13)

In the concluding chapter of this book Mr. Chase declared: “A working dictatorship over industry is indicated, if the plant is to be efficiently operated. Technical performance cannot be subject to popular vote . . .”(14) This is a typical attitude of leftists who constantly shout for “more democracy” for themselves while plotting dictatorship against society.

Traditional left-wing demands for greater constitutional rights actually disguise a plot to do away with the present Constitution altogether. Stuart Chase and other Keynesian agitators have questioned the fundamental validity of the Constitution of the United States. Chase has advised his readers that the Constitution is “outmoded” and should be scrapped in favor of “more effective federal control” and “to circumvent the old doctrine of checks and balances, by setting up boards and commissions which, like the Federal Trade Commission, combine legislative, judical and administrative powers.”(15) This matches the Keynesian concept of a strong Central Government without checks and balances, which in effect would allow one bureaucratic body to be policeman, judge, jury and executioner.

Another effective technique of the American Keynesians is the manufacturing of references and authority to give their writings an air of scientific validity. A standard maneuver is for a Keynesian like Stuart Chase to use as authorities for his propaganda such fellow Keynesians as George Soule, Alvin Hansen, Seymour Harris, J.M. Keynes and Thorstein Veblen. George Soule in turn uses all of the above plus Mr. Chase. Professor Seymour Harris will likewise then use Messrs. Chase and Soule plus all the rest and so on ad nauseam.(16)

Another method of creating the illusion of scientism is to form organizations which grind out statistics that can be used in socialist propaganda. An author like George Soule, for instance, will help compile statistics within such an “independent” organization and then will conveniently use figures from this same source, neglecting to mention his own participation.

Another common device is the use of statistics from government agencies in which Keynesian authors personally had a direct role as government bureaucrats. The prestige of the Government agency is exploited without the author’s role in it being mentioned. Such deceptions both tacit and expressed are the stock-in-trade of U.S. Keynesians.

The reason for such methods is the left-wing writer’s need to prove a matter “scientifically” and “impartially.” Both the Marxist and Fabian ideology originally claimed to be “scientific” as opposed to free enterprise, which is pictured as “anarchistic” and “unscientific.” Therefore a scientific facade is indispensable to create the illusion of modern progressivism. The Keynesian phase of the socialist movement continues the claim of scientific objectivity.

In the dissemination of their printed propaganda the Keynesian-socialists have developed a skill almost unbelievable in its effectiveness. Most of the booksellers in the United States use three basic guides in purchasing and sales promotion of new books. They are The New York Times Book Review, The New York Herald-Tribune Book Review and The Saturday Review An examination of the reviews shows that a small Keynesian socialist group has an amazing influence, not only in writing and publishing the books America reads, but also in reviewing them.

By concentrating on the three above mentioned reviewing sources this small group has managed to influence the direction of our whole society. One example is the case of J.K. Galbraith reviewing Seymour Harris’ book in the New York Times. The public naturally believes that this is an impartial and disinterested opinion. Most people do not know that Galbraith and Harris are Keynesian partisans at Harvard and often discuss each other’s writings long before publication. By reviewing each other’s works they assure favorable reception and big sales.

A brief research into this field shows the following: Seymour Harris’ book reviewed by fellow Keynesian George Soule; Alvin Hansen’s book reviewed by Soule; George Soule’s book reviewed by Norman Angell (British Fabian socialist); another Harris book reviewed by J.K. Galbraith; J.K. Galbraith’s book is reviewed by George Soule; Harris’ book is reviewed by Keynesian Paul E. Samuelson; Bonaro A. Overstreet is reviewed by Stuart Chase; Norman Angell is reviewed by Alvin Johnson ; S.E. Harris reviewed by Bertram D. Wolfe; Harris reviewed by H.J. Laski (British revolutionary).(17)

With such a well organized claque all applauding each other, the forward march of printed socialist propaganda proceeds with giant strides.

The publishers of large newspapers and periodicals certainly must know by this time that this small group has converted the book reviewing field into a private merry-go-round. The writers and reviewers are one interlocking circle; they merely change seats with one another. Millions of books have been forced upon the brain-washed American public. This has resulted in a massive flow of propaganda for Keynesian-socialism plus great personal wealth for the author-reviewer claque.

Other sources of social propaganda are some of the book clubs. The Book-of-the-Month Club, for instance, has promoted the sale of many millions of volumes selected by a group which has rarely ever allowed a non-leftist into their circle.(18)

An analysis of Keynesism in the United States is incomplete without a discussion of the role of Harry Dexter White while Assistant to the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Harry White was considered by Keynes as the “central figure” in Keynesian manipulations in the United States.(19)

White played a major part in organizing Keynes’ pet project—the International Monetary Fund. In the interim, Harry Dexter White was exposed as an active Soviet spy.

As a member of the Silvermaster spy ring, Harry Dexter White was accused of keeping the Kremlin informed of the top U.S. secrets for many years. He was named as a member of the same spy ring with Alger Hiss, Lauchlin Currie and Frank Coe, all Harvard graduates. The function of this group, according to testimony, was not merely to relay information but also to create government policy which would be of benefit to the Soviets. Other related activites were to create jobs for additional red agents, promote those already employed to higher positions and furnish the left-wing generally (socialists as well as communists) with information which would be used to help the revolutionary cause.(20)

White became an official of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1934. Keynes’ biographer states: “Only a few years ago, before his star had risen, he (White –ed.) had revered Keynes as the greatest living economist.”(21) However, as later proved, White was a Soviet agent and the Keynesian cover was a convenient device for pro-Soviet activities.

While the United States was still presumably a neutral (1941), Keynes, while representing the British in the United States, declared publicly: “that Harry White was a ‘constructive mind.’ ”(22)

In 1939 White had attempted to push through a plan for an All-American Bank which was quickly killed by Congress. Two prominent Keynesians, Harvard Professor Alvin Hansen and Adolph Berle, joined with White to extend the central bank idea on an international scale (1941). This was a world-wide extension of Keynes’ idea of a central bank as a bureaucratic weapon to whip private enterprise along socialist paths. Such a scheme was also suited to the Kremlin, which saw in such a maneuver a chance to undermine and weaken capitalism.

Keynes agitated for this idea while in London. Thus Keynes and White coordinated the International Bank idea from both sides of the Atlantic. To this day, Keynesians see nothing in White’s Soviet role. Keynes’ biographer writes that in the Keynesians’ plan “the central figure was undoubtedly Harry White. . . . He was a very remarkable figure, who should be accorded an honorable place in British annals . . . He had very solid intellectual quality and was an ardent admirer of Keynes’ economic work . . . ”(23)

This eulogy of Harry Dexter White was printed three years after he was exposed as a Soviet spy—typical of the attitude of Fabian socialist elements toward the whole coterie of spies and Fifth Amendment communists in the United States.

Included in the International Bank conferences with Keynes were such people as Virginius Frank Coe and Lauchlin Currie. Both of these gentlemen were named as espionage agents for the Soviets (Silvermaster cell.)(24)

In the preliminary conferences in Washington, Keynes became an intimate member of a social circle. This included “the Walter Lippmanns, the Frankfurters, the Achesons . . . and Archibald McLeish.”(25)

Many people in the United States mistrusted Keynes due to his influence with New Deal extremists. His policies were blamed for driving the country into a new economic slump (1937-39). White kept cautioning Keynes that there was strong Congressional suspicion of the whole matter of an International Central Bank. Therefore they arranged among themselves a kind of mock battle to allay the fears of critics. Keynes’ biographer puts it thus:

At heart he (White –ed.) admired and trusted Keynes. For diplomatic reasons a certain air of belligerency had to be maintained in public . . . Behind the scenes they ultimately became great cronies, going off to the baseball game together and having plenty of fun.(26)

When the Bretton Woods Conference convened, Harry Dexter White was its chairman.(27) Forty-four nations were represented and the International Monetary Fund was established with more than 8 billion dollars to work with. Keynes’ disciple Harrod complained:

It was learned that Harry White would not be the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. Keynes had always tended to take it for granted that he would be, and had come to repose confidence in his outlook and his vigour; he felt that under White the Fund would be in safe hands.(28)

The meshing of Keynesian interests with Soviet espionage policies produced a complete harmony.

During this same period Keynes was on extremely good terms with the Soviet representatives. He wrote (July 21, 1944):

Our personal relations with the Russians have been very cordial and we have seen quite a lot of them socially. We like them exceedingly and, I think, they like us. Given time, we should, I believe, gain their confidence and would then be able to help them a good deal.They want to thaw and collaborate.(29)

Playing his dual role to the end Keynes also maintained cordial relations with international bankers. His biographer Harrod wrote: “His (Keynes’ –ed.) old friend, Mr. Russell Leffingwell, provided him with a room to himself in the offices of J.P. Morgan.”(30)

An emotional note involved the relationship between White and Keynes towards the end of Keynes’ stay in the United States. Harrod, in describing a heart attack that Keynes suffered on the train to Washington, D.C. said: “And there, too, was Harry White, keeping patient vigil by his dear friend, full of sad anxiety.”(31)

In 1946 White was made U.S. Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund. This was a year after a secret F.B.I, memorandum named White as an espionage figure.(32)

The intertwining of socialist and Soviet interests in the United States via the Keynesian path is characteristic of the entire history of the radical movement. When Soviet agents, dressed as Keynesians, were exposed publicly, the Keynesian forces set up a cry in their defense.

Two months after White was exposed publicly as a Soviet spy, Chester Bowles, in a book edited by Harvard Keynesian Seymour Harris, declared:

During the last year, the campaign against the Communist Party in America has taken on hysterical proportions. This campaign and the witch hunts which accompany it are diverting progressive-minded Americans from the real threat to our demorcratic future.(33)

Curiously, the Fabian-Keynesian technique influenced the Communists to such an extent that some of the top Communist Party leadership wanted to accept the Fabian form completely. Earl Browder as secretary of the Communist Party in 1945 “proposed its dissolution and the reorganization of the Communists into an educational institution. This body should put up no election candidates of its own and would ‘be non-partisan in character.’ ”(34)

Browder, along with many others, was expelled for violating Kremlin discipline. It was charged that “Another major element in Browder’s opportunism was its Keynesism.”(35)

Browder and other Communists realized that they could secure political power by adopting the stealthy methods of the Fabians. The Fabians had proved what could be done under the guise of an “educational institution.”

Browder has subsequently become an open advocate on Keynesism for the United States.